We have recently created a special section of the forum, the Basement (Soap Box), to hold discussions on matters that we have traditionally said were off limits on the forum (things like politics, religion, etc.).

Update:

I have now modified the forum so that Soap Box posts do not show up on the UNREAD posts page.

The motivation behind this change is that the soap box should be a very minor part of the forum, and that its controversial nature is likely to turn people off and make them less likely to want to participate on the forum.. or at least less likely to be civil and engage in the main subject matter that we'd like to focus on. The Soap Box is something I am still a bit uneasy about, because I feel like it has the potential for disrupting the comity and focus of the site. And I'm uncomfortable with the tone of the posts showing up side by side with the software discussions.

So anyway, this is an attempt to ensure the Soap Box remains a very very minor part of the forum.

I note that this may not be the ideal solution -- it might be better to let people to opt-in to listing new soap box posts in their unread list, for people who do want to follow such posts. For now, if you do want to follow such posts, you need only bookmark the unread posts link but with the board id of 311 specified explicitly:

The long term policy of the DonationCoder forum is to be respectful and avoid topics like religion and politics. We set up the Soap Box so that we would have a place for discussions that became inappropriate for the main sections of the forum. But even with this section, we ask people try their best to ensure that this section does not become their focus on the site -- it's not what we are about. Use this section sparingly and make it a very small part of your stay at DC.

This forum is our home. We work hard to be welcoming and helpful to friends and strangers who hold widely differing views of life. If you are making a post that is significantly at odds with this idea, please consider whether there might not be a better website to make such a post.

I'm also playing with renaming it from Soap Box, which sounds like it is practically begging people to get up on their box and scream, to the Basement, which does a bit more to convey the unusual nature of the area.

I'm also playing with renaming it from Soap Box, which sounds like it is practically begging people to get up on their box and scream, to the Basement, which does a bit more to convey the unusual nature of the area.

Sounds like it would be too easy to get lost in a dungeon..Remember we don't want people to get lost down there -- the whole point is to keep us all together as part of a shared experience and to avoid becoming segmented into insular groups.

Hmm. I'm mostly okay with avoiding religion, but "politics" is becoming harder to avoid, because it's starting to cross over into requiring the educational services of techies (which is what you are) or techie-wannabes (me!) to form the coalitions necessary to stop the rabid new Big Brother pushes. Some of the best posts I've yet seen on these topics are here, starting to edge out Slashdot, my prior go-to zone.

Hmm. I'm mostly okay with avoiding religion, but "politics" is becoming harder to avoid, because it's starting to cross over into requiring the educational services of techies (which is what you are) or techie-wannabes (me!) to form the coalitions necessary to stop the rabid new Big Brother pushes. Some of the best posts I've yet seen on these topics are here, starting to edge out Slashdot, my prior go-to zone.

Just because politics invade our every day lives, it doesn't mean we have to be focused on it all the time. As mouser said, the tendency has been to keep the focus off of that. I think that invasion is the reason that 'The Basement' even has to exist- it's becoming harder to keep it out of all of your discussion. But I also think that it's not an impossible nor unreasonable goal- it's not what many/most come here for, and there are a wide variety of people that without discussion on such topics can be very civil and agreeable- but when you throw that in, the differences become more pronounced.

A forum I used to frequent has an unmoderated free speech section, where anything goes (as long as it wasn't spam or illegal), where people posted some of the most vile content, images, discussions, and language...and they called it "The Cesspool". It was their version of the Living Room. This was where all the politics, religion, drama, personal attacks, and off topic stuff went (they were an unofficial support forum for a P2P application, set up to keep the "help me" people from annoying everyone in their chat room).

The idea behind the name was that "The Living Room" sounded like a nice place to be and encouraged people to go there, but "The Cesspool" sounded like a rank, vile place you wouldn't want to visit, a place to post all the crap (pun intended) that didn't belong or wasn't suitable on any of the other boards....and it was. You needed to be pretty thick skinned and have a dark, twisted, sick sense of humor to participate in any of the discussions there, very much like their chat room on the P2P network. And in the beginning of the forum's life it was located at the very bottom of the board list to take focus off of it, and carried a warning that mentioned something about naked pictures of one of the chat room members that was intended to make you shudder and stay away. (Years later when the forum lost it's popularity as a support site, which had nothing to do with anything posted in that section, "The Cesspool" board became it's main focus, an extension of their free speech, anything goes chat room.)

So, picking a name that sounds like somewhere you wouldn't want to visit, and implies "trash", "crap", or any other type of content you probably wouldn't want to read, sounds like a good idea if you want to keep people away. (But we don't have to go so far as making it an unmoderated, free speech, anything goes section, full of vile stuff likely to cause animosity between forum members, like my friend's forum section is.)

Our Soap Box (what happens if I defy the name change, in the section that's supposed to have few(er) rules?) was/is still fairly civil. It's not *-chan. Soap Boxes still make me think of Mark Twain, and maybe Jonathan Edwards. I don't expect to find GNAA troll posts there. In a Cesspool I would.

I'll probably get flamed for this but I was wondering - that now we have the Basement, and the sort of things/subjects that suit that place - about proposing another section called maybe the Attic (or Loft in American ?) where members could post threads about Happy things, stories or events, things that make you feel good, things that make the "World" a better place for everyone ... ???

Notwithstanding, I do feel that we shouldn't go too far from the main purpose of DCForum.

.: I use K-Meleon - the browser you can control - but I love Pale Moon too :.

that now we have the Basement, and the sort of things/subjects that suit that place - about proposing another section called maybe the Attic (or Loft in American ?) where members could post threads about Happy things, stories or events, things that make you feel good, things that make the "World" a better place for everyone ... ???

that now we have the Basement, and the sort of things/subjects that suit that place - about proposing another section called maybe the Attic (or Loft in American ?) where members could post threads about Happy things, stories or events, things that make you feel good, things that make the "World" a better place for everyone ... ???

If you filter out the soap-box forum from the 'unread' page, shouldn't these messages also be filtered from the 'recent posts' summary at the bottom of the forum home-page?(see attachment in previous post)

Adding to my previous note, I now see that the last message posted ("Latest Post") does display the message in the Basement section, even now that these are no longer visible in the "Recent Posts" section. Maybe it should be filtered from there too?